I recently quit my last job and decided very wisely to take a vacation during the in-between period. It so happens that even while serving your notice period, there come a lot of accompanied stresses (specially when you are as much of a control freak as I am) with trying to chart out handover schedules, organizing things in neat folders for ease of access, preparing excel sheets for quick notes on each client complete with hyperlinks for related documents AND frantically searching for mails that you need to save on the cloud for your own records. This frenzy is peaked when your new job involves a change of city — you also spend your notice period trying to find the perfect new home which is equally close to the office and your soon-to-be-favorite book cafe while also allowing you the luxury of a great residential location in a society with a swimming pool, power backup, parking space and the works (yes, I am very high maintenance).

While the Vacation I plan to take should be the perfect break from the frenzy and hopefully I shall enter the new job with a super fresh mind, I have come to realize that holiday planning is just about as rejuvenating as the actual holiday itself.

I spend my office breaks pouring over Lonely Planet, Travel Blogs and E-mailing friends for suggestions. With every quaint village or pictures of lush green countryside I come across , I immediately go into a reverie where I am dressed in Audrey Hepburn-like sunglasses and scarf, driving that red convertible through the countryside with the Ukulele playing in the background. Endorphins are doing the cha-cha in my blood stream.

If the holiday itself is the Climax, planning it is Foreplay.

Just as foreplay is essential to get you going for the actual stuff, vacation planning keeps me excited about the holiday itself. It is the build up. I get an unmatched excitement from discovering all the options in front of me, evaluating them, shortlisting and choosing what I want to do the most — all this while knowing that this is leading up to the real good stuff.

I won’t lie — sometimes the planning can get to be bit of a pain. Specially the logistics, right from finding best inter-city travel options to negotiating with B&B’s for the best rates. This could tempt you to just let a Travel Agent take care of the painful stuff — a small fee for convenience and peace of mind. But the thing is, the agent in all probability will give you the tried and tested options which will no doubt be convenient and decent. But they will also be boring.

You see, I want a bit of mystery in my holiday. I want to discover. I want quaintness. I want to decide. I want to get lost. I want to regret. And that I will get only when I hold the planning reigns of my holiday in my hands, and maybe, even make a few foolhardy decisions.

So to all you wanderlusters — my advice is spend your pre-vacation days immersing yourself in all the information you can get about the place, lusting after beautiful pictures and interacting with hosts (specially if you plan to stay at B&B’s / homestays). You will extend the vacation excitement to way beyond just the travel days! :-)